NEWS
Sudan arrests 40 Ethiopians in Khartoum
Deutsche Presse-Agentur
September 14, 1995
Sudanese authorities were reported Thursday to have arrested at least 40 Ethiopians after accusing neighbouring Ethiopia and Eritrea of involvement in a four-day-old wave of violent anti-government demonstrations.
The Egyptian Middle East News Agency (MENA) reported from Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, that the arrests were combined with the evacuation of 17 dwellings inhabited by Ethiopians in the capital’s eastern district of al greef.
The demonstrations were sparked Monday at Khartoum University, just a few days after the Ethiopian government formally accused the Moslem fundamentalist Sudanese regime of harbouring three extremists involved in last June’s attempt to assassinate Egypt’s President Hosny Mubarak in Ethiopia.
Sudanese authorities, who have conceded that at least two persons had been killed in the demonstrations, said Thursday they had released all detained students and that the situation had returned to normal.
But Sudanese opposition groups in Cairo said that six protestors were killed and four others injured in fresh demonstrations Thursday in the Sudanese capital.
Uniformed army men have also begun taking part, said the groups, indicating that this may be behind a reported decision by President Omar Bashir to fire one of his top military aides, General Maamoun Hussein.
A Cairo spokesman for the Sudanese opposition Umma Party cast doubts meanwhile on reports that Bashir’s powerful fundamentalist ally, Hassan Torabi of the Islamic Front, had left the country.
The spokesman said Torabi had retired from his house in Khartoum’s al Riyadh district to a tightly-guarded resthouse situated 30 kilometres from the capital.
The demonstrations, blamed by the government on communists and foreign elements, started in earnest on Monday after Torabi’s security men arrested several students.
Chants shouted by the protestors reportedly assail Torabi and blame Bashir for rising prices and deteriorating economic conditions in the strategic country, Africa’s largest in area.
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